


There Was One

by fearfulofthenight (wibblywobblytimeturners)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 11:36:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2386919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wibblywobblytimeturners/pseuds/fearfulofthenight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was one man, and archer, with his younger self rattling inside. One man who kept running. Who always took took the shots, and always hit the mark. He devoted himself to S.H.I.E.L.D and his work, becoming a weapon for a cause he chose.</p><p>And there was one woman, her dual pasts competing in her restless mind. One woman who kept weaving webs of deception and death. She was forged, all her life, into becoming a weapon. And she became careless, apathetic to who she held in her Widow's embrace.</p><p>There was one assignment for the archer, to place an arrow through the Widow's heart. And it could have been easy. So easy.</p><p>But these things never are.</p><p>And Clint Barton may have found the one target he cannot hit.</p><p>(Cinematic Universe origins- how Hawkeye and Black Widow met, and how he brought her to S.H.I.E.L.D. Information from Earth-616 comic universe incorporated for their back stories and personalities. Work in progress)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Trickshot’s School of Thought

There was one.

There was one trembling, sandy haired boy with eyes like the high tide. There was one boy quaking with fear on the precipice of being a man; this boy could not have been older than 12 or 13, although his eyes told a different story. One boy not yet a man islanded on a dirt floor with a curved sky of canvas above him. One boy with a weight on his shoulders as he steadied one arrow, staring across the tightrope. One deep breath.

One bulky man behind him with skin that seemed stretched tight to his cheekbones in a permanent, grinning, square-jawed mask. He hovered behind the boy, watchful and waiting. His laughter like an avalanche: low and rumbling, with a hint of disaster.

There was one request of the mentor to the quaking boy.

“Kill him. Now, don’t wait all day. We have a code. Now it’s best you learn what happens when some bastard breaks the code.”

There was one man, shoved to his knees fifteen feet away, islands away. There was one rope tied around his hands. A fraying rope, a costume sash as a gag in his desperate, mouth. Tears and sweat marked his face. Lanterns hung at odd intervals throughout the tent, casting odd shadows from the tide pools of light.

Still more urgent, the mentor spoke again. “He would have bled us dry, left us for dead. Thief in the night, no longer one of us. No mercy for traitors.”

The boy shook his head, hesitantly. His jaw trembled, but he bit his lip, trying in vain to staunch the flow from his eyes.

“Kill.” Blunt now, like an axe stroke. “Here is your final lesson from me: always take the shot.”

Finely toned muscles holding the bow steady. Nimble fingers grasping an arrow, and hawk like eyes trailing a path. Now. Now. NOW.

There was one plea from fatigued muscles to fire now, end it now, let it go, take the shot. There was one plea from a desperate mind, clawing like a trapped animal to end it now, drop the bow, show mercy.

Now the cackling words of the mentor were thrown like spears in the dark, some slithering with tendrils around his throat.

“Coward!”

“Do it!”

“Useless.”

“Pitiful boy.

Waste of space.

Weeping orphan.”

****  


“DO IT NOW!”

The words of accusation grew into one chastising sound of the darkness, climaxing into the singular sound of an arrow whooshing through the empty night.

There was one arrow. Right into criminal’s eye. There was one man, bound and gagged, who toppled over as a marionette with cut strings. There was one dull sound of his body meeting the dirt, but the boy never heard it.

Clint Barton woke up in horror, tangled in bedsheets, a harrowing sound leaving his throat.

  
There was one scream echoing in two times. From a young boy, hands stained with blood, and from a sandy haired man, 15 years older, just a shell concealing that terrified boy, waking in terror and still trying to wash the blood away.


	2. A Girl in Red

There was one girl. A girl in red.

A girl, among others, borne here in the bitter cold wind. These girls, with the orders and the training and the hollowness that settled in their ribs. The echoing that something wasn't right. That there was more to their story than being forged into weapons in the woods and the Russian snow. This, of course, was a small side effect to crafting perfection. It would be purged from them soon enough. But now, it was time for them to sharpen their claws and learn a deadly embrace.  
There was one way for that little girl to mark herself jagged: to mature in blood and halting last breaths. It was time for one young woman to weave webs, to devour, and to kill. 

And there was a girl. A girl in red.  
A girl in the ballet, with ribbons climbing up her legs like vines of ivy. Like stems of roses, blossoming in her red leotard. She was tender and swaying, graceful and precise, with an edge of steel in her leaps and kicks. A power slumbering. 

A dancer on point.

A killer ready to pounce.

And these memories bled together, a lilting tune spilling through flashes of locked combat, or a gunshot blasting through a ballet. 

Two stories, one little girl, with a life of shadows and mirrors. Reality and fantasy meeting like clashing fighters. 

Killer or dancer- both merely players in a larger dance number, a larger scheme. What was the difference, really?

Natasha Romanova woke up one night, many, many years later, breathing ragged and hair falling in her face. She hunched over, holding her head in her hands. Another nightmare. Another feeling of her strings being cut. She hated the free fall of dreams that left her spiraling between the webs of her double lives and dubious reality. She hated that hollowness in her ribs that still settled there, after all these years.

There was one woman, and no answers.


End file.
